Are you trying to be sarcastic ? The controllers are tracked by kinect thanks to IR leds emitting a coded pattern, it's a known fact and used in games like killer instinct to attribute the right profile to the right controller for example.Originally Posted by hooijdonk17
[IMG]http://asset3.neogaf.com/forum/image.php?u=18191&dateline=1369222467[IMG]
lots of them, apparently.
or there was little oversight and shit got out of hand. not that I know thing 1 about controller design.
I think the D-Pad is clearly a step up from anything Xbox had previously done.
Its very easy to say, pssh you only need to fix this and this and then its perfect. how do you know its perfect? what if there was a design that could have been found that is even better? if you don't try, you never know.
Anyway, that amount of cash is likely nothing when you consider the controller has to last 7 - 10 years.
They have their own 3D printers.Originally Posted by koziakauzu
100 millions? let me see..
-overpaid external design company? maybe usd 1-2 millions? ok, let's be crazy, usd 10m
including:
- 1-2 product designers max. usd 100k/year
- 1 3D guy (if above staff can't do 3D). max usd 50k/year
- let say a ridiculous amount of overpriced prototypes... 20? max. usd 20,000 (considering they don't have their own 3D printer)
-for the programming, sourcing of components, etc, they have their guys in-house
We are still far from the claimed development cost. Honestly who ever worked in product development field knows this is insulting bullshit. It is just a basic freaking controller even if the buttons, the design, the feeling or whatever else are nice.
Also internal staff will be included in this cost. Their salary costs the business, without employing them and paying them you couldn't make the controller, so that is added to the bill to the business.
In Geoff's behind the scenes video from the initial reveal there were about 5-6 people working on the testing alone, so there's likely even more than that on the design side.
Companies like Microsoft have a tendency to over-employ and have far more people working on something than is really required and lots of fingers in your pie from elsewhere. It would most definitely not have been a 2-man operation.
They then might even go so far as to include Project Managers who will need to give the direction and approvals etc.
$100m is a lot, I would agree on that but there are a heck of a lot of hidden costs involved.
On that note, I think its money well spent. I went back to the Xbox 360 today to play some Halo with some friends who haven't upgraded yet and felt shocked at how alien the 360 controller felt; the ABXY buttons were too high, the thumbsticks were too flat, the general feel of the controller was just not as good as the One's controller. Add in the fact that aside from features and fixes done to the controller, there were also thousands of ideas I bet they tried out but ultimately left out for some reason or other.
This guy knows his stuff, the $100 mill figure is marketing BS.Originally Posted by Chittagong
It's an extraordinary sum, and if they actually managed to spend that much they should be ashamed of it and never mention it. The numbers just don't add up. From what I know
- R&D and tooling for consumer electronics products much more complex than this is $10-30M, which includes both salaries for 100+ engineers, their tools and equipment plus the creation of final manufacturing line
- Qual research with a few hundred respondents globally is around $200K
- Commissioning 3D printed and hand detailed appearance models sets you back between $5-10K
So to land to $100M you would have needed to have three different commercial scale programs with a total of some 600 engineers and 3 alternative mass manufacturing grade production lines ready to go PLUS have some 20.000 people in qual sessions globally PLUS commission about 1000 detailed 3D printed appearance models.
To do that much work and get to rumbling triggers and better grip sticks surely is not a thing to be proud of.
There is no way it took that much to develop a controller lol. Guaranteed they spent like 30 million on controller costs or something of that nature. Think of how many people you are paying guys. It doesn't take a thousand people to do this at full yearly salaries of 100k lol. The numbers M spouts for hours worked, money spent, etc. It's to make people feel good and nothing more. Sounds more like they include a big chunk of One marketing in that figure.The number is supposed to show how much MS cares for gaming and the gamer. It served its purpose and it was probably quite inflated as budgets usually are when they're used for PR.
For instance, changing the chip in the controller is the biggest thing by far. Developing that chip is what costs you the most money. If they spent 100m doing that then well they paid some people great amounts of money to do it. This isn't a GPU though. So the complexity isn't even close not even in the same ballpark.
100m to design a shell, dpad, or vibration motors lol? Those things have been available for years from manufacturers and so have 90% of the parts. M barely made any innovations on the thing though we know it needed a new chip. Even if Sony said they spent 100m we know that would be a lie. Changing the buttons to digital, new shell? 10m. New stick design? 20m. New chip? 40m. Slightly enhanced vibration motors and touchpad? 30m. Yeah, right. A few major people you could count on two hands are responsible for the overall design no?
Again, they have some weird practices at that company. Hey guys we love you we spent 4 billions dollars on this trying to make it so you don't own your games. But we really love you. From what I know a few major people are responsible for a big part of the design process on these things with a lot of consultants and what not. 100m is not THAT easy to spend. I think people are jaded by what the PS3 costed so many years ago. That was to set up factories for complex chips to be made. None of that had to be done here. And if they did spend that much well all the power to them I just don't believe it.
How would you end up with that? All they had to really do was change a design of a controller slightly and make a new chip. They do half of this with regular controller refreshes lol. People put too much stock in these numbers at times. I guess that is what PR wanted.Better to spend $100M than to end up with an Ouya controller.
I was just making a joke.Originally Posted by ZealousMonkey
How would you end up with that? All they had to really do was change a design of a controller slightly and make a new chip. They do half of this with regular controller refreshes lol. People put too much stock in these numbers at times. I guess that is what PR wanted.
But people, in general, don't really know how much stuff costs to design and make.
For instance, you just said, "make a new chip". Do you know how much it costs to make a set of masks for a new chip?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1177359
$2M on 90nm, which is a very old tech (article from 2002). It is certain to be much higher now. Just for the masks so that you can fab the chips. And if you have to make the masks more than once due to a bug? It starts to add up.
You see, that little abbreviation right there is the problem: FPS. The Xbox 360 controller (and I assume the Xbone's, too as they're quite similar) is an FPS controller. It's far too specialised. The only thing you can really use its triggers for are gun shooting mechanics.Originally Posted by Networker
PS3 controller was utter shit, don't know who came up with the most uncomfortable design ever. So improving upon that was simple, make it bigger and fix the trigger. Yet PS4 controller feels super cheap in hand in terms of quality.
Xbox 360 was near perfect as everyone has said, improving upon that; is quite hard. Make something EVEN better is harder than make something better from shit. Playing FPS with Xbox One controller is whole new level, those triggers are insanely good.
Playing forza with those rumble trigger screams next gen, think of all the possibilities they could add in FPS games with different gun feel.
Take Mirror's Edge as an example: I played Mirror's Edge on PS3 (which was also the lead development platform for the game) and I loved the controls which put jumping, sliding/rolling, etc. on the triggers. It just felt great and fresh and intuitive. So imagine my surprise when I heard people say that the Mirror's Edge's controls sucked in their opinion. I didn't get it...until I bought a 360 controller for the few PC games I have and man, I immediately understood the complaints. The Xbox triggers simply aren't made to be used as anything but gun triggers which might be great for shooter fans but for people like me it just seems amazingly restrictive. It must be even worse for non-shooter-developers trying to come up with cool control schemes.
That is 2m dollars. That doesn't mean it costs more now. It could easily cost significantly less as we have made oodles of progress in design since 2002 but I get what you are saying. Things have gotten much easier to design for mass scale since then if we are simply talking about the equipment to make it. Chinese factories have also gotten much more efficient.I was just making a joke.
But people, in general, don't really know how much stuff costs to design and make.
For instance, you just said, "make a new chip". Do you know how much it costs to make a set of masks for a new chip?
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1177359
$2M on 90nm, which is a very old tech (article from 2002). It is certain to be much higher now. Just for the masks so that you can fab the chips. And if you have to make the masks more than once due to a bug? It starts to add up.
Okay, the masks for a chip are expensive. So is designing the actual chip. Put 40m into that which is giving it some leeway. Now how and the hell do you get 60 more million dollars out of buttons, shells, and vibration motors?
Honestly I see these kinds of threads as nothing but a point-laugh exercise at this point.
Whats the issue here really? You don't like the controller? Well that's ok because the overwhelming majority of people love the new controller, so Microsoft wasn't able to please EVERYONE even after spending 100 million on it, well big fucking deal because they wouldn't be able to please everyone even if the spent a 100 billion dollars on it.
Nothing more than a typical circle jerk as expected.
I think the idea here is that people are interested in actually what goes into the design process and how much it costs. No need to have an aneurysm. If it really did cost 100m that is fine but more detail is welcome.Originally Posted by Naminator
DO people really give a shit about how much money a multi-billion dollar corporation spends on it's R&D?
Honestly I see these kinds of threads as nothing but a point-laugh exercise at this point.
Whats the issue here really? You don't like the controller? Well that's ok because the overwhelming majority of people love the new controller, so Microsoft wasn't able to please EVERYONE even after spending 100 million on it, well big fucking deal because they wouldn't be able to please everyone even if the spent a 100 billion dollars on it.
Nothing more than a typical circle jerk as expected.
If this was 20nm I could see costs escalating a lot. But we have been on 28nm for some time.
The supreme irony of the situation is that most fans of the DualShock 3 will tell you that the 360's triggers are worthless for shooting by virtue of being analog and having longer travel than R1/L1.Originally Posted by Harlequin
You see, that little abbreviation right there is the problem: FPS. The Xbox 360 controller (and I assume the Xbone's, too as they're quite similar) is an FPS controller. It's far too specialised. The only thing you can really use its triggers for are gun shooting mechanics.
Take Mirror's Edge as an example: I played Mirror's Edge on PS3 (which was also the lead development platform for the game) and I loved the controls which put jumping, sliding/rolling, etc. on the triggers. It just felt great and fresh and intuitive. So imagine my surprise when I heard people say that the Mirror's Edge's controls sucked in their opinion. I didn't get it...until I bought a 360 controller for the few PC games I have and man, I immediately understood the complaints. The Xbox triggers simply aren't made to be used as anything but gun triggers which might be great for shooter fans but for people like me it just seems amazingly restrictive. It must be even worse for non-shooter-developers trying to come up with cool control schemes.
Personally, I see the fragile, slightly awkward bumpers as much more of a problem.
You're naive if you honestly believe that.Originally Posted by ZealousMonkey
I think the idea here is that people are interested in actually what goes into the design process and how much it costs. No need to have an aneurysm. If it really did cost 100m that is fine but more detail is welcome.
If this was 20nm I could see costs escalating a lot. But we have been on 28nm for some time.
Upper management costs tons when you have dozens of redundant positions all signing off on a product.How did the XB1 controller cost $100m to make
What are you on about? And if you don't like this circle jerk why are you still here? I think more than a couple people here are interested in this controller and how much it costs. Geezuz dude this isn't gamefaqs.Originally Posted by Naminator
You're naive if you honestly believe that.
This is more or less what I am thinking. Some dude went and added up controller costs with salaries of high paying execs and came out with the 100m banner.Originally Posted by Zuhzuhzombie!!
Upper management costs tons when you have dozens of redundant positions all signing off on a product.
No one is saying these things are cheap. But 100m for this is like crazy Sony from 2005.
No, it isn't less now. It's far more, trust me. Smaller geometries on chips mean that you have to play more tricks with the masks to make the light bend in the right way.Originally Posted by ZealousMonkey
That is 2m dollars. That doesn't mean it costs more now. It could easily cost significantly less as we have made oodles of progress in design since 2002 but I get what you are saying. Things have gotten much easier to design for mass scale since then if we are simply talking about the equipment to make it. Chinese factories have also gotten much more efficient.
I'm not sure what they spent for real. I think that all you can say for sure is that they spent a lot of money because it costs a lot to design and make stuff.Okay, the masks for a chip are expensive. So is designing the actual chip. Put 40m into that which is giving it some leeway. Now how and the hell do you get 60 more million dollars out of buttons, shells, and vibration motors?
Absolutely no, I did not mean to offend :( It just seemed funny with your avatar next to it, and the fact that they added something nobody really wanted while not fixing something everything complained about..Are you trying to be sarcastic ? The controllers are tracked by kinect thanks to IR leds emitting a coded pattern, it's a known fact and used in games like killer instinct to attribute the right profile to the right controller for example.
Edit: I also feel like people automatically assume the XB1 controller is superior to the DS4 given the history of both consoles and their controllers. After trying both controllers side by side today I feel like the DS4 is easily the better controller.
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